Samuel Beckett
(1906-1989)
Beckett's Life.
(Quoted from the Samuel Beckett Website)
(This material is drawn mainly from James Knowlson's thoroughly detailed and excellent biography, Damned to Fame: The Life Of Samuel Beckett, published by Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996.
• Born Samuel Barclay Beckett, at Cooldrinagh house, in Foxrock, County Dublin, Ireland on 13 April, 1906, the second of two sons. Parents are middle-class Protestants.
• On Monday, April 24th, 1916, the Easter Uprising breaks out in Dublin, but the conflicts take place for the most part within the city proper, and so Beckett remains somewhat removed from the unrest. At one point his father takes him to a hill near their home at night to watch the fires in the city. Beckett enters Portora Royal School (where Oscar Wilde also attended) later that year, where he becomes very active and successful in the athletic program. It is here that Beckett first begins to study the French language. He is in his second year at Portora when Ireland is partitioned.
• Enters Trinity College, in Dublin, in 1923 at age 17, choosing French and Italian as his subjects.
• Begins suffering from insomnia in 1926, and, soon after, also begins to be afflicted with heart palpitations that often lead to night sweats and panic attacks. Although he eventually seeks medical assistance for the problem, it persists for many years following.
• During his final session at Trinity, Beckett meets Alfred Péron, a student who had once shared a study with Jean-Paul Sartre at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, in Paris. The two quickly become friends, Péron helping Beckett extensively with both his spoken and written French. It is during this period that Beckett firsts comes to grips with the issues of pain and suffering that would influence his work enormously throughout his life: his roommates at that time recall an evening in which Beckett returned to the apartment "with an aluminium strip from one of the printing machines which used to grace the platforms of railway stations, on which he had inscribed the words 'PAIN PAIN PAIN' and which he affixed to the wall." [1]
• Graduates Trinity College in 1927.
• Travels to Paris in 1928, taking a job lecturing on English at the École Normale Supérieure. Begins to drink during his first year in Paris (having avoided alcohol for most of his previous life); within two years, he is drinking heavily, but only after five o'clock in the evening, a custom that will remain with him all his life. Later in 1928, Beckett meets James Joyce, the two becoming close friends almost immediately, and begins working with him on the Work in Progress, later to be titled Finnegan's Wake. A month after meeting Joyce, Beckett writes the essay, "Dante... Bruno. Vico... Joyce.", at Joyce's suggestion that Beckett write something concerning Work in Progress.
• Publishes Whoroscope in 1930, winning an award of ten pounds in a poetry competition. Shortly afterward, his study, Proust, is published to critical acclaim for the Dolphin Books series.
• Returns to Dublin in late 1930, to lecture at Trinity College. Begins writing the short stories that will later comprise More Pricks Than Kicks. Beginning to wrestle with the symptoms of deep depression, as well as feeling frustration with the profession of teaching, he resigns his position at Trinity in December of 1931.
• Travels again to Paris in 1932, where he completes his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Broke, he returns to Dublin, and then to London for a brief time, where he composes the main body of Murphy. Plagued by health problems, including a cyst on his neck, he spends many weeks bed-ridden following operations.
• Beckett's father dies of a heart attack on 26 June, 1933. His last words to his son are "Fight fight fight" and "What a morning". Beckett's own health problems grow more serious with the passing weeks, his depression growing worse also. A physician friend recommends that he seek psychoanalysis, and, as the practice of psychoanalysis is not legal in Dublin at the time, Beckett travels to London in December of 1933, and begins undergoing sessions with Dr. Wilfred Bion that will continue over the span of two years.
• Begins studying the German language in earnest between 1934-1936, experimenting with writing many passages in German, and then, later, short stories.
• Travels to Germany in 1936, meeting and associating with several painters in Hamburg. While there, Beckett begins to solidify his negative perceptions of the Nazi party, witnessing numerous examples of the Nazi persecution of Jewish citizens during his stay.
• Settles permanently in Paris in 1937. In December of that year, on Twelfth Night, in fact, he is nearly killed when he is stabbed by a "pimp" [2] while walking home late at night. Joyce visits him often in the hospital, and pays his medical expenses. Murphy is published while Beckett is in the hospital. Soon after being released from the doctor's immediate care, Beckett engages in a brief affair with the American heiress, Peggy Guggenheim, but breaks it off when he realized that he does not reciprocate the depth of her affections.
• Beckett begins to experiment with writing poetry in French. In early 1938, he meets Suzanne Deschevaux-Dusmesnil: the two quickly become friends, engendering a relationship that will continue throughout their lives.
• In 1940, Paris is invaded by the Nazis. Beckett's old friend, Alfred Péron, having returned to Paris, recruits Beckett to the French Resistance, and, in September 1941, Beckett and Suzanne Deschevaux-Dusmesnil join the Gloria SMH cell of the network. The majority of their work for the Resistance cell consists of passing on to Allied Forces in London information sent in from all over France regarding German military activities and positions.
• The Gloria SMH cell is infiltrated by a German agent in 1942, and more than 50 of it's members are arrested by the Nazis. Beckett and Suzanne are forced to flee Paris, leaving their apartment only hours before the Gestapo arrive. They take refuge in the south of France, in Roussillon d'Apt, where Beckett takes work on a farm in exchange for room and board for them both. Alfred Péron is arrested in Paris and deported to a concentration camp: he dies on May 1, 1945, shortly after being freed by the Swiss Red Cross.
• Beckett returns to Paris with Suzanne after the Germans are defeated in 1945. Later that year, he travels to Ireland to visit his mother. On his return to Paris, he begins to compose his writing primarily in French, claiming that his use of his second language enables him to "cut away the excess, to strip away the color", and concentrate on the sound and rythm of the words, unburdened by the excessive stylistics and allusion he associates with his writing in English.
• Completes Mercier et Camier in 1946, his first novel in French. The Nouvelles ("La fin", "L'expulse", "Le calmant", and "Premier amour") are also completed that year.
• Writes his first full-length play, Eleutheria, in 1947, but refuses to allow it to be published during his lifetime.
• Writes the bulk of Molloy while staying at a villa near the Italian border in 1947.
• Begins translating for the periodical transition in 1948, becoming good friends with the magazine's new owner, George Duthuit. [3] Through Duthuit, Beckett is introduced to, among others, Andre Breton, as well as French artists André Masson, Pierre Tal Coat, and Alberto Giacometti. Duthuit and Beckett are conducting a dialogue concerning art when Beckett comments:
"I speak of an art turning from it in disgust, weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road."
To which Duthuit inquires, "And preferring what?"
"The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express."
• Writes En Attendant Godot in 1948-49, visually inspired, at least in part, by a Caspar David Friedrich painting.
• Beckett's mother, May, dies 25 August, 1950, having suffered from Parkinson's disease for some time.
• An extract from Watt is published in 1952 in Merlin, a magazine chiefly run at that time by, among others, Alexander Trocchi. In 1953, Merlin Press publishes Watt in its entirety, along with Henry Miller's Plexus, the first two such books to emerge from the press in their first printing. [4]
• En Attendant Godot is produced by Roger Blin for the stage in 1953, in Paris. It is the first of Beckett's works to bring him widespread notice, and engenders enormous controversy among critics and audiences, at times even resulting in blows between supporters of the play and disparagers of it within the audience. With the success of the play, Beckett is forced to begin what will become a lifelong struggle to protect his privacy, declining even favorable interviews for both print and radio, and refusing to indulge whatsoever in anything which he perceives as self-promotion.
• In May of 1954, Beckett's brother, Frank, is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He dies 13 September, 1954. Despite, or perhaps because of, profound grief at the loss of his brother, Beckett writes an initial version of Fin de partie later that year.
• On October 3, 1954, Beckett receives a letter from Luttringhausen prison in Germany: the letter is signed only "un Prisonnier". The letter's contents are described by James Knowlson in Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett:
"You will be surprised," wrote the prisoner, "to be receiving a letter about your play 'Waiting for Godot,' from a prison where so many thieves, forgers, toughs, homos, crazy men and killers spend this bitch of a life waiting... and waiting... and waiting. Waiting for what? Godot? Perhaps." The prisoner related how he had heard from a French friend about the play that was taking Paris by storm and had the first edition sent to him in prison; he had read it over again and again, then had translated it himself into German... he had obtained permission to put the play on in the prison, had cast it himself, rehearsed it and acted in it. The first night had been on November 29, 1953.
The effect on the prisoners was electric; the play was a triumph. "Your Godot was our Godot," the prisoner wrote to Beckett. He explained that every inmate saw himself and his own predicament reflected in the characters who were waiting for something to come along to give their lives meaning. He then offered his own interpretation of the play, seeing in it a lesson of fraternity even in the worst of conditions: "We are all waiting for Godot and do not know that he is already here. Yes, here. Godot is my neighbor in the cell next to mine. Let us do something to help him then, change the shoes that are hurting him!"
• Writes Act Without Words in 1956. At the invitation of the BBC, he also writes All That Fall for radio performance; it is broadcast in January, 1957.
• Krapp's Last Tape is written in early 1958, inspired partly by memories of Ethna MacCarthy, whom Beckett had loved deeply (and unrequitedly), and who had been diagnosed with terminal throat cancer in Decmber of 1957. Beckett promptly withdraws performances of All That Fall and three mimes-- which were to be performed by Deryk Mendel-- from the Dublin International Theatre Festival when he learns that both an adaptation of Joyce's Ulysses and a play by Sean O'Casey have been censored from the festival:
"As long as such conditions prevail in Ireland I do not wish my work to be performed there, either in festivals or outside them. If no protest is heard they will prevail for ever. This is the strongest I can make."
Beckett also encounters much difficulty in attempting to stage both Endgame and Krapp's Last Tape in England, resulting in many months of argument with English officials before the performances are allowed to run.
• Completes Embers in 1959, having written an initial version of it just before Krapp's Last Tape: it is broadcast on BBC radio on June 24, and receives the Prix Italia award later that year. Also begins work on Comment c'est in early 1959.
• Awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Trinity College in 1961.
• Marries Suzanne Deschevaux-Dusmesnil on March 25, 1961, in England. The civil ceremony is kept a secret. Happy Days is completed that year.
• Words and Music and Cascando are written in 1961, to be broadcast on BBC radio.
• Travels to New York in 1964, his only visit to the United States, to participate in the production of Film, starring Buster Keaton. Film debuts at the New York Film Festival in 1965.
• Imagination morte imaginez and Come and Go are completed almost simultaneously in 1965, as Beckett is recuperating from a painful surgery to remove a tumor in his jaw. Eh Joe is also written in 1965, with Jack MacGowran in mind for the character, 'Joe'. Eh Joe is Beckett's first work to be composed with the intention of being performed on television.
• Diagnosed with double cataracts in 1966. Bing and Assez are completed later that year.
• Becomes extremely ill in April 1968, and is subsequently diagnosed with a severe abcess on his lung. Although he is somewhat better by September, he is not wholly cured, and he and Suzanne leave for a vacation in the Portuguese islands in December.
• Composes Breath in early 1969, to be included in Oh, Calcutta!, but is furious when the piece is altered without his permission to include naked bodies on the stage. After some difficulty with the contract, Beckett succeeds in having Breath withdrawn from the production.
• Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Beckett is in Tunisia when he receives a telegram from his associate and friend, Jerome Lindon:
"Dear Sam and Suzanne. In spite of everything, they have given you the Nobel Prize-I advise you to go into hiding. With affection."
Beckett is sincerely appalled, knowing that the award will bring only further assaults on his privacy, and takes Lindon's advice, sequestering himself as much as possible from the efforts of the press. Among the numerous telegrams Beckett receives wishing him well and congratulations is a brief missive from a M. Georges Godot (his real name) in Paris, saying only how sorry he was to have kept him waiting. Beckett sends Lindon in his stead to receive the prize in Stockholm.
• Beckett's cataracts are operated on in 1970, and again in early 1971. His vision is improved dramatically.
• Not I, Still, That Time, Footfalls and Ghost Trio are all written between 1972 and 1976. Throughout the 1970's and beyond, Beckett refuses to allow any of his works to be performed before segregated audiences in South Africa. He also befriends and supports many victims of oppressive regimes in Eastern Europe, and is perceived to have held a great sympathy for prisoners in general. Throughout his adult life, Beckett continually manifests a great deal of empathy for those he sees as suffering, for whatever reasons, often causing his friends to feel it necessary to protect him from those who might prey upon his generosity.
• Beckett's health declines steadily throughout the early 1980's. Diagnosed with emphysema in 1986, he subsequently moves into Le Tiers Temps nursing home. While staying there, he completes his final work, a poem entitled "What is the Word".
• Suzanne dies on July 17, 1989. Beckett follows her on December 22. Buried at Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
folly -
folly for to -
for to -
what is the word -
folly from this -
all this -
folly from all this -
given -
folly given all this -
seeing -
folly seeing all this -
this -
what is the word -
this this -
this this here -
all this this here -
folly given all this -
seeing -
folly seeing all this this here -
for to -
what is the word -
see -
glimpse -
seem to glimpse -
need to seem to glimpse -
folly for to need to seem to glimpse -
what -
what is the word -
and where -
folly for to need to seem to glimpse what where -
where -
what is the word -
there -
over there -
away over there -
afar -
afar away over there -
afaint -
afaint afar away over there what -
what -
what is the word -
seeing all this -
all this this -
all this this here -
folly for to see what -
glimpse -
seem to glimpse -
need to seem to glimpse -
afaint afar away over there what -
folly for to need to seem to glimpse afaint afar away over there what -
what -
what is the word -
what is the word
________________
[from: Grand Street, Vol. 9, No. 2, Winter 1990, pp.17-18, N.Y., ISSN 0734-5496]
A Voice in the Dark
A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine.
To one on his back in the dark. This he can tell by the pressure on his hind parts and by how the dark changes when he shuts his eyes and again when he opens them again. Only a small part of what is said can be verified. As for example when' he hears, You are on your back in the dark. Then he must acknowledge the truth of what is said. But by far the greater part of what is said cannot be verified. As for example when he hears, You first saw the light on such and such a day. Sometimes the two are combined as for example, You first saw the light on such and such a day and now you are on your back in the dark. A device perhaps from the incontrovertibility of the one to win credence for the other. That then is the proposition. To one on his back in the dark a voice tells of a past. With occasional allusion to a present and more rarely to a future as for example, You will end as you now are. And in another dark or in the same another devising it all for company. Quick leave him.
Use of the second person marks the voice. That of the third that cankerous other. Could he speak to and of whom the voice speaks there would be a first. But he cannot. He shall not. You cannot. You shall not.
Apart from the voice and the faint sound of his breath there is no sound. None at least that he can hear. This he can tell by the faint sound of his breath.
Though now even less than ever given to, wonder he cannot but sometimes wonder if it is indeed to and of him the voice is speaking. May not there be another with him in the dark to and of whom the voice is speaking? Is he not perhaps overhearing a communication not intended for him? If he is alone on his back in the dark why does the voice not say so? Why does it never say for example, You saw the light on such and such a day and now you are alone on your back in the dark? Why? Perhaps for no other reason than to kindle in his mind this faint uncertainty and embarrassment.
Your mind never active at any time is now even less than ever so. This is the type of assertion he does not question. You saw the light on such and such a day and your mind never active at any time is now even less than ever so. Yet a certain activity of mind however slight is a necessary adjunct of company. That is why the voice does not say You are on your back in the dark and have no mental activity of any kind. The voice alone is I company but not enough. Its effect on the hearer is a necessary complement. Were it only to kindle in his mind the state of faint uncertainty and embarrassment mentioned above. But company apart this effect is clearly necessary. For were he merely to hear the voice and it to have no more effect on him than speech in Bantu or in Erse then might it not as well cease? Unless its object be by mere sound to plague one in need of silence. Or of course unless as above surmised directed at an other.
A small boy you come out of Connolly's Stores holding your mother by the hand. You turn right and advance in silence southward along the highway. After some hundred paces you head inland and broach the long steep homeward. You make ground in silence hand in hand through the warm still summer air. It is late afternoon and after some hundred paces the sun appears above the crest of the rise. Looking up at the blue sky and then at your mother's face you break the silence asking her if it is not in reality much more distant than it appears. The sky that is. The blue sky. Receiving no answer you mentally reframe your question and some hundred paces later look up at her face again and ask her if it does not appear much less distant than in reality it is. For some reason you could never fathom this question must have angered her exceedingly. For she shook off your little hand and made you a cutting retort you have never forgotten.
If the voice is not speaking to him it must be speaking to another. So with what reason remains he reasons. To another of that other. Or of him. Or of another still. To another of that other or of him or of another still. To one on his back in the dark in any case. Of one on his back in the dark whether the same or another. So with what reason remains he reasons and reasons ill. For were the voice speaking not to him but to another then it must be of that other it is speaking and not of him or of another still. Since it speaks in the second person. Were it not of him to whom it is speaking speaking but of another it would not speak in the second person but in the third. For example, He first saw the light on such and such a day and now he I is on his back in the dark. It is clear therefore that if it is not to him the voice is, speaking but to another it is not of him either but of that other and none other to that other. So with what reason remains he reasons ill. In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point.
...
Another trait its repetitiousness. Repeatedly with only minor variants the same bygone. As if willing to him by this dint to make it his. To confess, yes I remember. Perhaps even to have a voice. To murmur, Yes I remember. What an addition to company that would be! A voice in the first person singular. Murmuring now and then, Yes I remember.
...
Another trait the flat tone. No life. Same flat tone at all times. For its affirmations. For its negations. For its interrogations. For its exclamations. For its imperations. Same flat tone. You were once. You were never. Were you ever? Oh never to have been! Be again. Same flat tone.
...
In another dark or in the same another devising it all for company. This at first sight seems clear. But as the eye dwells it grows obscure. Indeed the longer the eye dwells the obscurer it grows. Till the eye closes and feed from pore the mind inquires, What does this mean? What finally does this mean that at first sight seamed clear? Till it the mind too closes as it were. As the window might close of a dark empty room. The single window giving out on outer dark. Then nothing more. No. Unhappily no. Pangs of faint light and stirrings still. Unformulable gropings of the mind. Unstillable.
...
For why not? Why in another dark or in the same? And whose voice asking this? Who asks, whose voice asking this? And answers, His soever who devises it all. In the same dark as his creator or in another. For company. Who asks in the end, Who asks? And in the end answers as above? And adds long after to himself, Unless another still. Nowhere to be found. Nowhere to be sought. The unthinkable last of all. Unnamable. Last person. I. Quick leave him.
Texts for Nothing, #4.
Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it's me? Answer simply, someone answer simply. It's the same old stranger as ever, for whom alone accusative I exist, in the pit of my inexistence, of his, of ours, there's a simple answer. It's not with thinking he'll find me, but what is he to do, living and bewildered, yes, living, say what he may. Forget me, know me not, yes, that would be the wisest, none better able than he. Why this sudden affability after such desertion, it's easy to understand, that's what he says, but he doesn't understand. I'm not in his head, nowhere in his old body, and yet I'm there, for him I'm there, with him, hence all the confusion. That should have been enough for him, to have found me absent, but it's not, he wants me there, with a form and a world, like him, in spite of him, me who am everything, like him who is nothing. And when he feels me void of existence it's of his he would have me void, and vice versa, mad, mad, he's mad. The truth is he's looking for me to kill me, to have me dead like him, dead like the living. He knows all that, but it's no help his knowing it, I don't know it, I know nothing. He protests he doesn't reason and does nothing but reason, crooked, as if that could improve matters. He thinks words fail him, he thinks because words fail him he's on his way to my speechlessness, to being speechless with my speechlessness, he would like it to be my fault that words fail him, of course words fail him. He tells his story every five minutes, saying it is not his, there's cleverness for you. He would like it to be my fault that he has no story, of course he has no story, that's no reason for trying to foist one on me. That's how he reasons, wide of the mark, but wide of what mark, answer us that. He has me say things saying it's not me, there's profundity for you, he has me who say nothing say it's not me. All that is truly crass. If at least he would dignify me with the third person, like his other figments, not he, he'll be satisfied with nothing less than me, for his me. When he had me, when he was me, he couldn't get rid of me quick enough, I didn't exist, he couldn't have that, that was no kind of life, of course I didn't exist, any more than he did, of course it was no kind of life, now he has it, his kind of life, let him lose it, if he wants to be in peace, with a bit of luck. His life, what a mine, what a life, he can't have that, you can't fool him, ergo it's not his, it's not him, what a thought, treat him like that, like a vulgar Molloy, a common Malone, those mere mortals, happy mortals, have a heart, land him in that shit, who never stirred, who is none but me, all things considered, and what things, and how considered, he had only to keep out of it. That's how he speaks, this evening, how he has me speak, how he speaks to himself, how I speak, there is only me, this evening, here, on earth, and a voice that makes no sound because it goes towards none, and a head strewn with arms laid down and corpses fighting fresh, and a body, I nearly forgot. This evening, I say this evening, perhaps it's morning. And all these things, what things, all about me, I won't deny them any more, there's no sense in that any more. If it's nature perhaps it's trees and birds, they go together, water and air, so that all may go on, I don t need to know the details, perhaps I'm sitting under a palm. Or it's a room, with furniture, all that's required to make life comfortable, dark, because of the wall outside the window. What am I doing, talking, having my figments talk, it can only be me. Spells of silence too, when I listen, and hear the local sounds, the world sounds, see what an effort I make, to be reasonable. There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough. I'm making progress, it was time, I'll learn to keep my foul mouth shut before I'm done, if nothing foreseen crops up. But he who somehow comes and goes, unaided from place to place, even though nothing happens to him, true, what of him? I stay here, sitting, if I'm sitting, often I feel sitting, sometimes standing, it's one or the other, or lying down, there's another possibility, often I feel lying down, it's one of the three, or kneeling. What counts is to be in the world, the posture is immaterial, so long as one is on earth. To breathe is all that is required, there is no obligation to ramble, or receive company, you may even believe yourself dead on condition you make no bones about it, what more liberal regimen could be imagined, I don't know, I don't imagine. No pomt under such circumstances in saying I am somewhere else, someone else, such as I am I have all I need to hand, for to do what, I don't know, all I have to do, there I am on my own again at last, what a relief that must be. Yes, there are moments, like this moment, when I seem almost restored to the feasible. Then it goes, all goes, and I'm far again, with a far story again, I wait for me afar for my story to begin, to end, and again this voice cannot be mine. That's where I'd go, if I could go, that's who I'd be, if I could be.